Sermon Download Size Limit

For my downloads to work with our 40mb memory limit, I found I had to keep my file size around 9-11mb. My original files were around 18-20mb (about 50 minutes) and originally had a bit rate of 48 (stereo). To get the file size down in the range of 9-11mb, I changed the bit rate to 24 (mono). I was surprised that the quality was still pretty good.

are you uploading this through some FTP program or browser?

I'm uploading with FileZilla.

Can you try using FTP commander? See if it will take the big file.
what you could also do is get another hosting plan going. Godaddy.com or eboundhost are offering their plans at like $4-5/month. and there is no limits on uploads. I've got our church videos siting on another server that way when i upload them I'm not slowing site down.

Thank you for the suggestion. I probably should clarify. Uploading the files is working fine. The issue I was having that led up to this thread is with downloading the sermon through Sermon Speaker. When I had the larger MP3s, the download from sermon speaker would fail. Thomas suggested I check on the PHP Memory Limit. It appears that was the culprit as ours on our shared hosting plan was set at 40mb. Thomas suggested 120mb but unfortunately our shared hosting plan won't allow any changes to the PHP Memory Limit since it is a shared host. So as a work-around to this, I simply lowered the size of the MP3 files which lessened the memory need and allowed the download to work properly. Thanks again for your offering. Much appreciated!!!

We use a bitrate of 24 kBit/s and of course mono, and it also sounds good enough.
As long as you don't record music, you can lower the quality to almost nothing and it will still sound ok.

And stereo isn't needed at all. You record the speaker with a mono microphone anyway. Stereo will then only double the filesize without bringing any additional quality.